Infrastructure is back on the agenda in a big way in the US. There are two good reasons why. First, the current incumbent of the White House has put infrastructure spending at the top of the agenda (well, first after immigration and healthcare reform…); because in a hat-tip to Roosevelt’s pump priming-policies, massive investment infrastructure not only creates jobs (especially Trump’s homespun blue-collar jobs for American people narrative), it also repays dividends in community benefit and long-term regeneration. Second, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has just released its Infrastructure Report Card – a simple assessment of the state …

In November 2016 at the Highways UK conference, Jim spoke passionately about the future of major projects and infrastructure in the post-Brexit world of uncertainty. There’s no question that infrastructure is a key element of economic recovery and national pride – but project management offices are under ever greater pressure to cut costs and demonstrate value. We say: The Quick Wins are over. There’s nothing left to trim back. And people can’t work any harder, either – like tired doctors and drained pilots, more pressure doesn’t yield a better result. Yet high-performing organisations successfully complete 89% of their projects, while low …

This extraordinary article from CIPD suggests that, even though a bad recruitment decision can cost upward of £300,000, plenty of businesses are tying their hands behind their own backs with poorly defined job descriptions. It’s no surprise: we have all heard of the manager or entrepreneur who hires in their own image: recruiting “another me”. And then there’s the problem of line managerial weakness. As the grey-hairs take retirement and breadth of experience becomes ever harder to find in companies which have long since stripped any spare talent from their operations, many middle managers have very little practical experience outside their day-to-day …

A2B Excellence are regular contributors at the Young Rail Professionals group – an informal gathering of tomorrow’s rail leaders, which now numbers over 1900 members. Our most recent presentation, “5 Secrets the Project Management Books Won’t Tell You” was both well-received and rigorously questioned; and for those of you who couldn’t make it, it’s now available online. We’ll show you: Why successful project management is about people, not processes. Useful things you can do in your organisation right now, at no cost, to improve your success rate and; How to deploy your resources to keep projects on time, on budget and …